Reading the Bones: A Peggy Henderson Adventure

By Gina McMurchy-Barber

Short-listed for the 2009 Silver Birch Award, commended for the 2009 Best Books for Kids & Teens

Due to circumstances beyond her control, 12-year-old Peggy Henderson has to move to the quiet town of Crescent Beach, British Columbia, to live with her aunt and uncle. Without a father and separated from her mother, who's looking for work, Peggy feels her unhappiness increasing until the day she and her uncle start digging a pond in the backyard and she realizes the rock she's been trying to pry from the ground is really a human skull.

Peggy eventually learns that her home and the entire seaside town were built on top of a 5000-year-old Coast Salish fishing village. With the help of an elderly archaeologist, a woman named Eddy, Peggy comes to know the ancient storyteller buried in her yard in a way that few others can - by reading the bones.

As life with her aunt becomes more and more unbearable, Peggy looks to the old Salish man from the past for help and answers.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550027328
• ISBN13: 9781550027327
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.8" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 9 to 12 years
• Grade Range: Grades 4 to 7